It Needs Somewhere Else to Live.
On excavating our stories and sharing them.
It needs somewhere else to live besides my body... the weight of the story for all that it is.
The last few mornings I've woken up and written about grief, complexity, imprints, pain, confusion, compassion, and care. I've laid out boundaries and paths of harm, paths of corrections, and not a scrap of performance.
Because it needs somewhere else to live. I can't keep it locked in my body.
I did for a while. The unspoken stories brought inflammation that did not recede for months. Instability in my low back that at one point made it almost impossible to even move. Tears that weren't ready to spill. Words that weren't ready to form.
What I've shared the last few days in writing, has been specifically in relationship to my father and even more so, my feelings that are tied to his passing: one year and 3 days ago today. But it's not really about Dad because he's not here. It's about how I will carry the things I've learned from him.
How I will carry the bruises that rise and fade on my heart. How I will carry the care mixed with confusion. How I will carry myself having been brought into the world by people who breath by breath taught me how to abandon myself. I don't do that anymore, or at least I catch myself rather quickly if I notice that I am.
How I will carry the miracles. How those miracles transformed me. All the myriad things I learned directly and indirectly from my brilliant dad.
What I intimately know of predation, narcissism, and psychic harvesting--and how I've built resilience that I trust and a keen nose for detecting consciousness that carries harm.
How deeply I honor my own intuition and instincts.
What I've seen of bypassing and how it leaves not only the body, but ultimately the soul behind.
The weight of these stories cannot live only in the body without pulling the body down into pain, deterioration, and dysfunction.
A body can only bear so much emotional weight before it turns on itself.
This is why truth must emerge from the well--She cannot live there. She emerges naked. Hard to look at for some, a treasure for others, but unable to remain buried lest She poison the well.
To speak the truth is not to speak ill of the dead; it is to bring healing to life.
May we heal.
May Dad heal.
May our hearts learn to hold even more.